June 2004 Archives
This is almost a non-fiction parallel to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, with Gavin MacKenzie setting out his thesis that between 1421 and 1423 various elements of a huge Chinese fleet discovered and mapped the Pacific Islands and Australia, North and South America, the Antarctic, Greenland and Iceland, and not forgetting the northern coast of Scandinavia and Russia, settling some and spreading flora and fauna, language, customs and technology to the others.
It's an ambitous and seductive work, drawing upon seemingly incontrovertible evidence (in Menzies' view) combined with the author's wealth of experience of times and tides gained from his career in the British Navy. Parts of me want to believe that a more culturally and technologically advanced people discovered the world before Columbus and Cook and to re-write the history of the age of European Empires, but the historian in me winced many-a-time at the huge leaps of faith required, and my gut feeling is that once I've finished I'm going to have to seek out the reactions of some professional historians to read the counter-arguments.
Ah, look at these.....
Buy it: Amazon link
I must have looked at this book countless times in libraries and bookshops, but somehow something always put me off. I'm glad that I broke through that "bible" barrier in my last Barbican browse as The Poisonwood Bible is a fantastic book. It provides a great story, told by 5 of the female players, with the action moving from the root of the saga set in 1960s colonial Africa, onwards through events and locations in 1970s and 1980s in both America and Africa.
Buy it: Amazon link
Another fantastic fast of easy-read chick-lit in the form of short stories by All The Names, some known, others new to me. Some familiar themes, but a bunch of new slants.
Buy it: Amazon link
Serendipity led to my actually finishing this one... I started it over the Bank Holiday weekend in Walton (to take my mind of horrendous period pain and my first Open University assignment, a truely unenjoyable combination), and found it too depressing to persevere with until yesterday. A post-TMA 1 shopping trip with Hazel, spending her money on things for her post-transformation pad, meant I needed something to read on the bus, and Hotel World was all I had (cue another trip to the Barbican library). And having managed another chapter, the Guardian had an article on top 50 books as voted for by Hay festival goers (I think), which ranked Hotel World highly.
So I finished it last night.
I can see why it's rated - It seems well written, and the variety of perspectives well grounded and insightful - but I think first person narratives about death aren't really ever going to be my cup of tea.
Buy it: Amazon link